My lockdown- finding the positives 💕

Me again 🤗

Here I am doing my second blog woop woop.

I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to say that you’s would really want to actually know. So I gave up trying to work that out and just decided I’d go with where I left off last so.......

Last time I told you all the story of how Rita’s came about and our first few years in business. I ended with heading into 2020 which was set to be an extremely busy year for weddings and finished up with what could go wrong....From previous experience things we thought could go wrong could have been, bought too much stock, bought too little, one of us being sick and no one to cover the shop (like normal kinda sickness like a bug or cold not a deadly virus), mum breaking her elbow for the 3rd time, mum guilt of trying to manage the shop while spending quality time with the kids and trying to stay sane amongst many others! What we didn’t plan for was CORONAVIRUS!!!!!

(I hope you all said Coronavirus in that accent from Tik Tok because I now can’t say it without saying it like that 🤣)

So like most out there we never thought in a million years that there would be a global pandemic that meant we had to close Rita’s doors and go into lockdown. Even then when we closed up we thought ok 3 weeks off this will be lovely, even though worried that we had to close, in our minds it was just for a couple of weeks, we said to ourselves look it’s out of our hands, our health and the health of our customers are more important we’ll blast this virus out and get back in no time.....

again how wrong could we be!

I seen others saying they went through different emotions with being in lockdown which was exactly how we found it. As the weeks continued, that then turned into months there’s  no doubt it was extremely worrying at times when we thought about the business and would we ever get back and be able to recover from it. As much as we did worry we always found a way to stay positive we mainly appreciated the time to slow down and appreciate what’s really important in life.

I started off like super mum we were up first thing for Joe Wicks work out then it was home schooling, a walk with both girls and then a good dinner made in time for my husband getting home as he was a key worker, super mum lastly roughly a week!....it then went to lazying about until about lunch time when I finally got us changed for the day (some days we didn’t even get changed) roughly 3weeks behind on home schooling and getting greyer by the day trying to find my inner teacher and putting on I’d say a stone in weight (I’m guessing because I’m actually afraid to find out) and the bed time routine was well and truly out the window they were going at all sorts of times

BUT

when will we ever again get the chance to laze about in our pjs, watching films and snuggling our kids in the morning not rushing them and ourselves out the door and guess what I suck at teaching!  Why I never wanted to be one but my Amelia got to bake, do lots of arts/crafts and her favourite thing making designs for her dolls, playing with me and her sister more than she ever has. She was also petrified of dogs before lockdown so I knew this was the time to do something about it we took our friends wee dog out for her to get used to and gradually she did and would actually probably sleep with her in her bed now if she was allowed to. This was a massive achievement she had such anxiety before and lockdown gave us the time to work on her fear. We were also spoilt with the weather it definitely made it a lot easier (and seriously wishing for the sunny days to come back) days spent out in the garden, the kids playing in the pool, we even did a virtual race day where we all dressed up and it was such a giggle, the putting on weight I’m trying to look for the positive and all I can come up with is ‘life’s too short eat up’

One other stand out positive for me is developing a lovely friendship with a neighbour we never knew we had. This lovely gentleman is called Tony and he lives just up in the next culldesac from us. One thing that I did continue  was a wee walk with my girls most days. We noticed Tony sitting in his living room on our way and we began to wave and him back to us. Next Tony left us out a bunch of daffodils from his garden and we then dropped him off a little Easter bunny done by the girls which he then stuck to his window (and is still there). We continue to go to see Tony every 2/3 days. Tony is shielding and I know us going to see him, having a wee chat over the fence and seeing the girls makes his day. 💯 if it wasn’t for us being in lockdown we would never have met Tony even though he was just round the corner from us this whole time.

The biggest lesson in all of this for me was to just enjoy the small things in life, love and appreciate those in my life . Social media has had a massive part in people thinking you need this and that and when it comes to it nothing materialistic matters. Now it’s a pity it took this awful virus for us to see this and I just hope we all don’t fall back into that negative way of looking at life (me included).

So I’ve rambled for long enough one last thing I would like to say that throughout this myself and mum have such admiration for all those health care workers, working throughout this time and that continue to. We clapped every single Thursday as a family and you truly are the hero’s.

Until next time girls. Hopefully it’ll be something useful. 🤣

Nuala Xo